Re: php.net layout with CSS-P

Rasmus Lerdorf wrote:

On Tue, 22 Jul 2003, Davey wrote:

Strict compliance just goes further towards the seperation of semantics and style. Validity (be it strict or transitional) makes it easier to debug errors within the markup. Think, by keeping it valid, errors are quickly diagnosed, it is similar to coding with the error reporting set to E_ALL.

Not really, often you have to add all sorts of silly crap just to appease the validators when no browsers in existence care. -Rasmus

That "silly crap" is usually worth adding for semantic reasons. Whilst common browsers do not care (much), other browsers do, text browsers prefer semantic markup (for example, as they don't read CSS <div class="header"> will just be standard text, <h1> will actually be a header). Also other browser mediums also prefer semantic markup, the most common probably being using a screen reader, it is this same reason that <em> and <strong> should be used instead of <i> and <b>. However if you want less "silly crap" validate to XHTML Transitional but you should be warned it is just that - transitional. There is already no longer a "transitional" markup in XHTML 1.1 (the frameset DTD can be achieved by adding in the frames module) and as such there are no plans for anything other than a single "strict" type in XHTML 2 and up. Validating is more than the here and now, it helps in the future too. - Davey